Endangered species as food; interdisciplinary approaches to stemming biodiversity loss and food insecurity

社会、行为和经济科学局提供博士后研究奖学金，为新近毕业的博士毕业生提供获得额外培训的机会，在知名科学家的赞助下获得研究经验，并在本科生和研究生培训之外拓宽他们的科学视野。博士后奖学金的进一步设计是为了帮助新科学家引导他们的研究努力跨越传统的学科界限，并利用独特的研究资源、地点和设施，包括在国外。这一博士后奖学金支持一位在粮食安全和生物多样性跨学科领域崭露头角的科学家。尽管生物多样性和贫困密切相关，但令人惊讶的是，很少有科学家定量研究生态系统健康和人类健康是如何相互影响的。研究人类及其环境的综合方法可以加强保护和公共卫生政策，以协调目标，并创造干预措施共同受益的潜在情景。这一博士后奖学金将提供资金，以扩大一名训练有素的人类学家的学科广度，以探索跨学科方法，以遏制教科文组织世界遗产的生物多样性丧失和稳定粮食安全。除了培训一名来自美国的女科学家外，该项目还为一名来自马达加斯加的博士生和几名马达加斯加当地的研究助理创造了教育机会。该项目有可能直接改善地球上最受威胁和食物最不安全的栖息地之一的儿童健康和濒危物种的未来。它通过提供关于生态系统与人类健康之间的动态相互作用以及驱动非法狩猎濒危物种的人类动机的迫切需要的信息，为保护和公共卫生政策制定者提供信息，从而推动科学进步。此外，它还将这些跨学科的科学发现转化为对马索阿拉河的综合保护和公共卫生行动，以促进人类和森林的健康和福利。在该项目期间，研究小组正在设计、实施和测试联合国教科文组织世界遗产马达加斯加马索拉半岛跨学科保护和人类健康行动计划的效果。这个分三个阶段的多学科项目旨在整合人类学、政治经济学、保护生物学、生态学和公共卫生的定量和定性方法，完成对人类诱因、人类健康、狩猎行为(包括非法捕捞)、生态系统特征和野生动物种群动态(包括五个濒危物种)的严格跨学科研究。在超过24个月的时间里，这个研究小组在14个地点对森林、人类和濒危物种的健康之间的动态互动进行了量化：就他们的健康、资源使用和生计采访了400多个家庭的成员；通过人体测量和血红蛋白采样测量了2000多人的健康；监测了5名重点猎人的日常行为；监测了150个栖息地的森林生态；以及调查了140个区域样带和跨越110多公里的跨半岛样带的10种狐猴。利用这些数据，该团队正在建立一个人类-森林-狐猴相互作用的系统动力学模型，以设计和模拟一个综合的人类健康和保护行动计划的影响。这项行动计划正在7个测试社区实施，试图解决日益增加的人与野生动物冲突的问题，并确定是否有可能实现保护和公共卫生干预的共同利益目标。

The Directorate of Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences offers postdoctoral research fellowships to provide opportunities for recent doctoral graduates to obtain additional training, to gain research experience under the sponsorship of established scientists, and to broaden their scientific horizons beyond their undergraduate and graduate training. Postdoctoral fellowships are further designed to assist new scientists to direct their research efforts across traditional disciplinary lines and to avail themselves of unique research resources, sites, and facilities, including at foreign locations. This postdoctoral fellowship supports a rising scientist in the interdisciplinary area of food security and biodiversity. Although biodiversity and poverty are intimately related, surprisingly few scientists have quantitatively investigated how ecosystem health and human health affect each other. An integrated approach to studying humans and their environment can strengthen both conservation and public health policy to align goals and create potential scenarios of co-benefits from interventions. This postdoctoral fellowship will provide funds to expand the disciplinary breadth of a trained anthropologist to explore interdisciplinary approaches to stem biodiversity loss and stabilize food security in a UNESCO World Heritage site. In addition to training a female scientist from the United States, this project creates educational opportunities for a doctoral student from Madagascar and several local Malagasy research assistants. This project has the potential to directly improve child health and the future of endangered species in one of the most threatened and food insecure habitats on earth. It advances the progress of science by informing the decision making of conservation and public health policy-makers by providing much needed information on the dynamic interactions between ecosystems and human health, and the human incentives that drive the illegal hunting of endangered species. Further, it translates these interdisciplinary scientific findings into applied integrated conservation and public health action on the Masoala to advance the health and welfare of both people and forests. During this project, the research team is designing, applying, and testing the effects of an interdisciplinary conservation and human health action plan in on the Masoala Peninsula of Madagascar, a UNESCO world heritage site. The three-phase multi-disciplinary project aims specifically to integrate quantitative and qualitative methods from anthropology, political economy, conservation biology, ecology, and public health to complete a rigorous interdisciplinary study of human incentives, human health, hunting behavior (including illegal harvest), ecosystem characteristics, and wildlife population dynamics (including five endangered species). Over 24 months at 14 sites, this research team is quantifying the dynamic interactions between the health of forests, people, and endangered species by: interviewing members of over 400 households about their health, resource use, and livelihoods; measuring the health of over 2,000 people through anthropometry and hemoglobin sampling; monitoring the daily behavior of five focal hunters; monitoring forest ecology at 150 habitat plots; and surveying ten lemur species in 140 regional transects and across a trans-peninsula transect of over 110 aerial kilometers. Using these data the team is building a system dynamics model of human-forest-lemur interactions to design and simulate the effects of an integrated human-health and conservation action plan. This action plan is being implemented in 7 test communities to attempt to solve issues of increasing human-wildlife conflict and to determine whether there are possibilities for co-beneficial objectives of conservation and public health intervention.